Rockwell Automation said Monday that it purchased the assets of SoftSwitching Technologies, a Middleton, Wisconsin-based provider of industrial power quality detection and protection systems.

SoftSwitching Technologies solutions improve uptime in manufacturing production by identifying and correcting brief power disruptions called voltage sags, company officials said.

Typically, voltage sags can cause computerized machinery to go off-line, precision instruments to fail, and control systems to shut down.

These problems can be extremely costly for customers, particularly in the semiconductor, automotive, food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, Rockwell said.

Brief power disruptions account for up to 70 percent of all unscheduled downtime in manufacturing today, said Bob Lennon, vice president of industrial components.

Studies show that most of these events are caused by voltage sags lasting less than two seconds. SoftSwitching Technologies products strengthen our capabilities in plant-wide optimization, complement our current power quality solutions and protect our customers manufacturing assets.

The global, centralized intelligent network system also provides power grid alerts so manufacturers can monitor activity and correlate power quality events with unscheduled downtime, saving hours of guesswork and mechanical diagnostics.